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If you’re taking this course, it probably means your dog has some sort of behavior problem.

If that is the case, then the first thing you need to do is stop feeding your dog from a food bowl.

Food can be such a useful tool in training, but if you give your dog free access to food from a bowl then your dog will value the food much less and as a result, it will be much less effective as a training tool.

If you want to train your dog as easily, effectively and enjoyably as possible, you’ve got to make use of food in training. In most cases, it is going to be the easiest way to motivate your dog.

There are two main ways that you will feed your dog. The first is to put their food into a hollow chew toy like a Kong. This is easy to do and doesn’t take much time or effort for you to set up, but once you've put the food in and you give it to your dog it will automatically train your dog for you.

The second way you’ll feed your dog is by hand during training. 

In temperament training you’ll use the positive feelings your dog has for food and transfer those good vibes to any stimulus you want, teaching your dog to like people, animals, places, or anything else.

In obedience training you’ll use the food as a lure, a reward, and a distraction, to teach your dog to perform behaviors on cue reliably.

In toilet training, you'll use the food as a reward when your dog pees or poops in their designated doggy toilet.

At the beginning of the day, you’ll want to measure out your dog’s daily allotment of food and put it into a container to be used throughout the day in training. Use as much of the food as possible on whatever your dog’s biggest problem is. 

At the end of the day, if you have any food left over, put it into hollow chew toys which you can give to your dog any time they are going to be alone, or any time you want them to settle down.

If your dog has to work for all of their food, then they will value their food and for the most part you will be able to use their regular food for training. You won’t need to buy special “treats” for training, most of which are basically doggy junk food, filled with salt, fat, and preservatives. Instead, you can use a nutritious dry kibble which is much healthier for your dog and much cheaper than commercial treats.

In situations where you do want a special treat, you can use some liver-dusted kibble. Just crumble a few pieces of freeze-dried liver into a ziploc bag full of regular kibble, shake it up and voila: Enchanced Kibble!

The other big benefit of getting rid of your food bowl is that it’s healthier for your dog. Eating from a food bowl is very unnatural. Dogs didn’t evolve to have one or two large meals every day at the same time, and if your dog wolfs his food down quickly it can lead to a serious health condition called bloat. 

Furthermore, it sets your dog up to get anxious if their meal is not served at the exact time they are accustomed to.

Feeding your dog throughout the day is much closer to the way that dogs have eaten in the past, scavenging and hunting all day long, eating food a little bit at a time as they find it.

Some people do not like the idea of using food in training, and there are some legitimate concerns that you should be aware of. When it comes to obedience trainig in particular, you do have to be careful so you don’t misuse food.

I’ll address some of these concerns in the next section, and throughout the rest of the course, but know this, if you don’t use food in training you’ll be handicapping yourself and limiting the speed at which your dog’s training progresses.